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Data - observations

Submitted by Keith Murray on Sun, 2013-04-28 12:05

Data: from paper ... to the data deluge!

When I joined Ordnance Survey in 1969 there was not even a whiff of data around apart from the finance department and as regards maps perhaps in a few select university labs. Organisations were only just getting to grips with computers to pay salaries and then manage wider accounting needs. When I left in 2011 - data was the lifeblood of the organisation.

At a personal level data and programming arrived during courses at North East London Polytechnic and University College London [UCL], during the 1980's. I bought a BBC-B micro computer in 1984 and used it for all kinds of things including a least squares program I developed during the MSc course. Though even then I had no idea how profound it's impact would have on my life - and not only at work!

We are all data collectors now

Today I don't go anywhere without a at least one camera or a gps - in fact I often have two of these with me. Returning from holiday the days of the tedious "write-up" at school has been swapped out and replaced by a day processing several gigabytes of data.

After I finished at UCL in the summer of 1986 - data is what I did for a living (but it was still about maps!):